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  1. #1
    Obsessed & Compelled Bored at 3:00AM's Avatar
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    Default New DCU concepts/characters/retcons that were DOA...

    Not every new creative idea is a hit. When you take big swings, sometimes you're going to miss and there's nothing wrong with that. I'd rather creators be trying to come up with new stuff and failing than simply regurgitating the same reheated comics over and over again.

    However, I think it'd be fun to shine a spotlight on some of these failures to launch. Not out of spite or mockery, but to show just how hard it is come up with something new in the DCU that sticks.

    Even top writers like Geoff Johns, who has created so many great new stuff for the DCU, has also thrown out some stinkers that landed with a thud almost immediately. Among his more notable misses were his ignored and forgotten retcons like Superman's inability to be around technology, Barry Allen being the creator of the Speed Force, and Wonder Woman's superfluous secret twin brother. I suspect that Johns's recent retcons in Three Jokers will also be ignored, but it's too early to tell...

    Peter David once attempted to explain away Hal Jordan's fearlessness by retconning Abin Sur lobotomizing Hal to remove his ability to feel fear. This idea was tossed so quickly, it was forgotten almost as soon as it was introduced, lasting only one or two stories in Action Comics Weekly.

    Another notable DC flop was, like the recently failed and ignored New Age of Heroes, another well-intentioned attempt to launch a bunch of new characters at once--the Bloodlines crossover. This event saw more than a dozen new DC characters introduced that were almost universally considered failures right out of the gate, with the notable exception of Hitman.

    Another fascinating failure was Priest's attempt to retcon in Triumph, a deliberately unlikeable and abrasive new superhero, into the history of the JLA as its unknown founder. This character was so despised and the hate heaped upon him was so immediate, I can't think of another character at DC that was so decisively rejected. Preist's recent revelation that Triumph was also gay only adds to this failed character's mystique in my mind.

    What about you guys? What are some of your favorite failures and immediately ignored oddities within the DCU?

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  3. #3
    Obsessed & Compelled Bored at 3:00AM's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by SecretWarrior View Post
    This is a good one. I think this character was doomed from the get-go.

  4. #4
    Astonishing Member Ra-El's Avatar
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    So Geoff Johns tried to add technology as a weakness to Superman? What, he thought that kryptonite, red sun and magic wasn't enough?

    Actually is already past the time of drop two of those, keep only kryptonite because is already too late to get rid of it.

  5. #5

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    Geoff Johns' attempt to shoehorn in an unknown and missing twin sibling of Lightning Lord's, from his brief run of stories about the LSH in Adventure Comics. Paul Levitz walked that aborted would-be plot back to the established status quo so not subtly, and so quickly. that you could practically hear him say out loud, "No, Geoff, that's a stupid idea."

    The mid-90's Zatanna: Come Together mini-series and its long-term affects on Zatanna's character, costume, and powers. I actually liked it and understood the explanations and reasoning for the choices made in that mini that were given in the individual issues' text pieces, and was glad to see John Ostrander have that version of Zatanna make some appearances in his Spectre, so that story wasn't dropped quite as quickly as the OP was suggesting. But clearly, somebody (or several somebodies) behind the scenes at DC hated it, because some months after Zee's last guest-appearance in Spectre, she next appeared in the Superman titles, back in her half-tuxedo-half-fishnets costume, back to backwards-speaking spells, and back to being a stage magician, with the explanation being given in the letter's column afterwards when fans asked that Come Together had been completely retconned out of continuity. They didn't even try to come up with an in-universe explanation for reversing Zatanna's status quo.
    Last edited by Timber Wolf-By-Night; 10-27-2020 at 10:54 PM.

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by Timber Wolf-By-Night View Post
    Geoff Johns' attempt to shoehorn in an unknown and missing twin sibling of Lightning Lord's, from his brief run of stories about the LSH in Adventure Comics. Paul Levitz walked that aborted would-be plot back to the established status quo so not subtly, and so quickly. that you could practically hear him say out loud, "No, Geoff, that's a stupid idea."

    The mid-90's Zatanna: Come Together mini-series and its long-term affects on Zatanna's character, costume, and powers. I actually liked it and understood the explanations and reasoning for the choices made in that mini that were given in the individual issues' text pieces, and was glad to see John Ostrander have that version of Zatanna make some appearances in his Spectre, so that story wasn't dropped quite as quickly as the OP was suggesting. But clearly, somebody (or several somebodies) behind the scenes at DC hated it, because some months after Zee's last guest-appearance in Spectre, she next appeared in the Superman titles, back in her half-tuxedo-half-fishnets costume, back to backwards-speaking spells, and back to being a stage magician, with the explanation being given in the letter's column afterwards when fans asked that Come Together had been completely retconned out of continuity. They didn't even try to come up with an in-universe explanation for reversing Zatanna's status quo.
    What was Come Together about?

  7. #7
    The Man Who Cannot Die manwhohaseverything's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ra-El View Post
    So Geoff Johns tried to add technology as a weakness to Superman?
    As an anti-automation figure, Superman and tech don't get along . But the problem is, superman is supposed to be technology's weakness, not the reverse.In practice though , superman has been weak to tech ever-since tech based heroes like batman, ironman.. Etc became more popular.
    Last edited by manwhohaseverything; 10-28-2020 at 12:32 AM.

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by manwhohaseverything View Post
    As an anti-automation figure, Superman and tech don't get along . But the problem is, superman is supposed to be technology's weakness, not the reverse.In practice though , superman has been weak to tech ever-since tech based heroes like batman, ironman.. Etc became more popular.
    There is nothing anti-automation about Superman.

  9. #9
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    Ric Grayson

    The Ravagers

    Just about everything in regards to Scott Lobdell's Starfire

    The New 52 Titans

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by Agent Z View Post
    Ric Grayson

    The Ravagers

    Just about everything in regards to Scott Lobdell's Starfire

    The New 52 Titans
    Ric Grayson is one of DC's greatest blunder, their greatest ones are Identity Crisis, Metal/ Death Metal and BWL.

    Ravagers might've worked if the cast wasn't Terra and Beast Boy + literally whos and had a better plot. The book left me with this question: if Terra and Beast Boy can carry a book with bad writing, imagine what could be done with them in a book with competent writing?

    New 52 Titans and Starfire's treatment are proof that Lobdell's success with Red Hood is a fluke, that book is almost competently written.

  11. #11
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    Pretty good chunk of the New 52 when you think about it. Green Arrows was tossed from writer to writer

  12. #12
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    Well, I doubt we'll ever see Telos again.

    New Age of Heroes didn't seem intriguing to me conceptually (aside from perhaps The Terrifics, but I don't count that because those characters weren't new), but perhaps the biggest problem with it was that the creators and company didn't seem to genuinely care (or not care [i]enough[/i) about the concepts. There just wasn't nearly enough commitment there to get anything truly off the ground.

  13. #13
    Unstoppable Member KC's Avatar
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    Pandora of the New 52. She showed up a couple of times but nothing was really done with her until she was killed by Doctor Manhattan.

  14. #14
    Ultimate Member Gaius's Avatar
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    The Emotional Spectrum being a finite reservoir.

    Diana's deadbeat brother Jason has already been mentioned and Daddy Zeus has stuck around but the sex-pirate Amazons has at least been tossed out.

  15. #15
    Moderator Frontier's Avatar
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    Wonder Woman wearing pants.

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